There are arguments out there to scrap the annual release of the Public Sector Salary Disclosure list where organizations who receive money from the provincial government must let the public know who in their offices makes more than $100,000 a year.
One argument, which we believe doesn’t hold any salt, is that the annual release of said information was ordered two decades ago, and through all those years, no government has raised the threshold.
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The other is that the disclosure, once thought by many as a public shaming of people gorging at the trough on our tax dollars, is actually helping to raise salaries across the province in the public sector. That thought is downright scary, and merits deeper investigation.
Some folks believe the very act of showcasing all these salary levels has created a one-stop shopping event for managers and employees around Ontario in the public sector. A perusal of the list lets people see any salary levels of their counterparts if those folks top the $100,000 threshold.
In short, they can use the list to petition for a wage increase of their own.
“A skilled negotiator will make very good use of that information and will put upward pressure on salaries and total compensation packages as opposed to downward pressure,” said Finn Poschmann, vice-president of research at the C.D. Howe Institute in a 2014 CBC article.
Ahh, the lovely disconnect between civil service and the private sector. Not only are members of the gold-plated pension brigade (as is the case with many, many members of the province-wide Sunshine List) unfazed by being paid such largesse by we, the taxpayers, they are now looking at ways to pad those numbers.
As for folks who think the list should be scrapped because $100,000 is an antiquated figure, we don’t agree. It’s true in the near future the list of provincial government and supported agency employees who make more than $100,000 may read like a phone book, but when have we determined $100,000 a year in salary and taxable benefits is no longer A LOT of money for one person to make in a year?
It certainly remains a nice figure in the eyes of many in Chatham-Kent, where the average family income remains considerably lower.
Ever the grumpy old man, eh Bruce? What the list doesn’t show is how the annual rates are achieved. Police and Fire personnel are able to make big additions to their salaries with overtime and teachers can earn extra money with summer school contracts, which does skew the idea that fairy humble public employees are on big salaries. You’d get a much better idea of actual salaries if those additional tasks, and the additional hours taken to do them, were separated out. For the record neither I or my publicly employed wife appear on that list.
Good points. Steve, I realize overtime and summer school contracts naturally add to a number of the salary levels on this list. Still, they are close enough to the $100K threshold in the first place to easily top it with that extra effort. And the Public Sector Salary Disclosure website not only lacks much in the way of information, it is a horrendous place to try to gather information. Often, if you don’t know the name of a person in a particular organization, there’s no real way to find out what a person was paid. Notice we didn’t point out anyone from the OPP? The judiciary is also searched mostly on a name-only basis.
$100K in Toronto is nothing absurd. $100K in C-K, Timmins, Peterborough, North Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, etc., is a different matter. The public sector doesn’t properly factor in cost of living for wage.
So, Bruce, to take that thought one step further, maybe the threshold should somehow be tied to the region it is earned in. $100,000 is tough to live on in Toronto, in CK I agree with your position.
Interesting thought. Factor in cost of living.